Prosecution rests in Philly Traffic Court ticket-fixing trial

PHILADELPHIA — In closing arguments in the Philadelphia Traffic Court ticket fixing trial Thursday, a federal prosecutor assailed Magisterial District Judge Mark A. Bruno’s contention that he played no role in the culture of corruption that ate at the court’s integrity “like a cancer.”

Playing portions of taped telephone conversations between Bruno and retired Traffic Court President Judge Fortunato “Fred” Perri Sr., Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Wzorek told the jury that it was clear that Bruno was seeking “consideration” for a childhood friend who had gotten a speeding ticket and was worried about what points his license would be subject to.

“Credibility will determine your verdict in Judge Bruno’s case,” Wzorek said toward the end of his two-hour-long summation in the trial of Bruno and five former Traffic Court judges, along with a Philadelphia businessman, all accused of various counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy. Bruno, 51, of West Chester, was the only one of seven defendants to take the stand and testify in his defense.

“Do you believe what he told you?” Wzorek asked the six men and six women on the panel in U.S. District Judge Lawrence Stengel’s courtroom. “He got on the stand and told you a story” about simply wanting to straighten out details concerning the ticket. “But does that make any sense? I submit that what he was attempting was to fix a ticket for an old friend from grade school.”

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Wzorek’s closing argument took up the morning in court Thursday, with the first of defense arguments coming in the afternoon. It is unclear when Bruno’s attorney, Vincent DiFabio of Paoli, will get the chance to present his defense of Bruno, a 15-year veteran of the minor judiciary in Chester County.

The prosecution’s case concerns the system in Traffic Court in Philadelphia, the only court of its kind in Pennsylvania, in which authorities claim that judges and staff members in the court routinely provided “consideration,” or favors, for political, family, and social contacts in regard to moving violations.

Requests for consideration were funneled to individual judges through a variety of sources, including their personal court aides. Those defendants with connections to the court in the form of people like Perri were able to get their cases dismissed or favorably disposed of, without paying any money or even having to appear in court, the prosecution contends.

Wzorek cited some cases in which defendants who had actually appeared in court after having made a request for help waited until the end of the day, and then were abruptly told when all others had left that they had already been found not guilty.

The defendants’ attorneys have countered that their clients’ actions were simply those of any judge sitting and looking at a case, using their discretion to determine what the appropriate outcome of a ticket should be. They presented a statistical analysis that showed that hundreds of tickets were dismissed by the judges accused in the case — Michael Lowery, Robert Mulgrew, Willie Singletary, Michael Sullivan, and former President Judge Thomasine Tynes.

In his closing, Wzorek contrasted the motto chiseled in stone above the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. — “Equal Justice Under the Law” — with that which he said Traffic Court’s building should have — “Who Do You Know?”

“Or perhaps just one word: ‘Shame’” Wzorek said.

The prosecutor said that while the term “ticket-fixing” had not been used by the defendants in the case as they spoke in conversations that were being recorded by the FBI, that is what they were doing.

“They did not want to say it, but make no mistake, that is what it was. This fraudulent scheme was like a cancer at the Traffic Court, eating away at its integrity until the FBI showed up with a warrant. Then it stopped,” he said.

He said that although judges are entitled to exercise discretion in dealing with a case “in appropriate circumstances” they are still bound by the state rules of judicial ethics that prevent undue influence from outside sources.

The five former Traffic Court judges, he said, “trampled over those boundaries. It is like they never existed. They entered into a conspiracy to take care of each other. One hand washed the other. This team worked for the connected guy. Not the little guy.”

There was no evidence presented that Bruno participated in the elaborate system of “consideration” cases. He worked at the court only one week a year from 2003 until his indictment in 2013, filling in with other magisterial judges when the traffic court judges went to continuing legal education classes.

But Bruno is accused of improperly finding a man, Leon Robinson, who worked as a bus driver for the Oasis gentleman’s club, owned by a politically connected man, Henry Alfano, not guilty on two tickets, and for attempting to have the ticket for Joseph Mauro fixed by Perri and former Traffic Court administrator William “Billy” Hird.

Wzorek did not address Bruno’s actions concerning the bus driver’s citations in his closing — the judge in his testimony Monday said he found a lack of probable cause to issue the tickets — but took aim at Bruno’s actions regarding the Mauro ticket.

Bruno had testified that he was contacted by Mauro in November 2010 about whether he would receive points on a ticket he had received on the Walt Whitman Bridge, but that he did not tell the judge what the ticket was for. (He was stopped doing 70 mph in a 45 mph zone.) Bruno said he told Mauro to pay the ticket, which Mauro did.

But Bruno also testified that at a Christmas party for Perri’s son he attended the next month, he approached Hird to find out whether or not Mauro would indeed get points for the citation. He gave Hird his business card, but then said he never heard back from him.

So he contacted Perri about it. Those conversations, spiced with “salty language” Bruno apologized for Monday, were played in court during the trial in June, and again by Wzorek in his closing.

“You want me to look into it?” Perri is heard saying, adding, “I’ve still have come connections there. You want me to look into that for you?”

“Yeah,” Bruno said.

Wzorek ridiculed the notion that Bruno was simply trying to find out about points from Perri or Hird.

“Why is he asking Billy Hird for consideration on that ticket?” he asked the jury to consider. “You are a judge. You’ve handled thousands of traffic cases. You mean to tell me you’ve got to go to Billy Hird to ask about points? That tells you all you need to know what he’s doing. He’s fixing that ticket.”

Earlier this week, on Tuesday, DiFabio presented a number of reputation witnesses to testify briefly about Bruno’s reputation in the community for honesty and integrity. They included former county District Attorney Joseph Carroll; state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19th of West Whiteland; attorneys Daniel Bush and James Sargent of the West Chester law firm of Lamb McErlane; state Deputy Attorney General Andrew Rongaus; and Alice Hammond, president of the West Chester branch of the NAACP.